Artist: Sasha
Album: Scene Delete
Label: Late Night Tales
Release date: 01/04/2016
The Late Night Tales compilation series lay out a platform for the world’s best artists, from across the genre board, to delve deeper into their music collections and embed soundtracks for what the title suggests - late nights. Welsh weapon Sasha, who holds the title as the first truly global superstar DJ, has been selected as the next to curate a series of tracks that are spun to affect beyond the clubbing stratosphere where his soundsystem-bruising tracks have been let of the leash. With a love for post-minimalist modern classical and on being inspired by artists like Nils Frahm and Jon Hopkins, Scene Delete stands in to temporarily dim the lights on his timeless club music and shine a torch on entities of a more serene nature. From the first listen, you appreciate that what you have here is an hour and fifteen minutes with a sensuous, ethereal masterpiece.
For an entity of an expedition nature, you’ve really got to start from the beginning and in this case, we find Channel deq and View 2. The former takes on the role as the all-important, scene setting prelude with the damping of hazy keyboard chords to bleed into each other, changing the timbre of the sound, making it deeper, warmer and more intense. The latter, which has already been exclusively released to Soundcloud and left listeners torn for more, leads you in gently as chords from Channel deq drift off and what we’re left to explore is a built-up and broken down composition with a meditative purpose. From here and throughout, it’s almost like a torch is being held higher for a swoop for what lies ahead and you're thinking that you see the path clearly, only for it to be kiboshed. We hear repetitive intakes of breath, drifting synths and urgently scattered distortions which can often sound like we’re in hostile territory, only for the warmth to flood back in as if you gained the trust of potential captors. Aside from the silky layers, he still releases a little groove into the workings, which for a moment might drag you from your seating arrangement.
He ends the journey with notes laden with warm vocalic embraces, only for it to give way to a menacing clinking and sounds of a once violent passing storm. His ability to create a distinct mood that you can easily shape internal visuals to, is outstanding. In this case, the passing storm pushes you into a sense of being in the deep pools of danger, but nearly as quickly as it materialises, it’s gone with the rush of Vapour Trails' cascading orchestral warmth that makes you instantly forget the lives of your kids might have been in danger 5 seconds ago.
The beauty of is that it’s the kind of material whereby not every listen will be the same and the visuals you create certainly won’t be the same as the person next to you. Sasha mentions that these tracks kept building up, collecting dust with no outlet and he eventually found himself with 50 pieces of music. Count yourselves lucky that Late Night Tales approved and this side to him, that isn’t released so often, is set for the speaker treatment.
It might seem a while off, as mentioned View 2 is on Soundcloud ahead of it's release and it's already causing a somewhat of a major fuss, so we figured you have plenty time to set multiple reminders over the weeks to get it bought.
Tracklist
1. Channel deq
2. View2
3. Baracus
4. Linepulse
5. Time After Time
6. Detour
7. Pontiac
8. Cassette Sessions D
9. Cassette Sessions E
10. Healer
11. Modcon
12. Scarpa Falls
13. Warewolf
14. Bring on the Nighttime
15. Corvette
16. Shelter
17. Untitled 3
18. Abacus
19. Rooms
20. Broadcast
21. Vapour Trails
